Karma

Schmidt Number: S-5627

On-line since: 31st January, 2019

V

Dornach, March 1, 1924

I

F we
speak in detail about karma, we naturally must distinguish, in
the first place, between those karmic events of life which come
to a human being from outside and those which arise, as it
were, within his inner being. A human being's destiny is
composed of many and diverse factors. His destiny is dependent
on his physical and etheric constitution. It is dependent on
what the human being, according to his astral and ego
constitution, can bring of sympathy and antipathy toward the
outer world, what others, again, according to his constitution
can bring to him as sympathy and antipathy. Moreover, the
destiny of the human being depends on the most manifold
complications and entanglements in which he finds himself
involved on the path of life. All of this determines the human
being's karmic situation for any given moment of time or as a
totality for his whole life.

I
shall now try to put together the total destiny of man out of
these various factors. For that purpose we intend today to take
our point of departure from certain inner factors in the human
being; we intend to look at that factor which, in many
respects, is really of cardinal and decisive importance,
— that is to say, his inherent tendency toward health and
illness, and that which then becomes effective as the basis for
this tendency in his strength of body and soul with which he is
able to fulfill his tasks.

If we
wish, however, to judge these factors correctly, we must be
able to see beyond many a prejudice that is contained in modern
civilization. We must be able to enter more into the
original nature of the human being; we must gain real insight
into what it signifies that the human being, as far as his
deeper nature is concerned, descends from spiritual worlds into
physical earth existence.

Now,
you know that what is summed up in the concept of heredity has
today found its way, for example, even into the realm of art,
of poetry. If anyone appears in the world with certain
qualities, people inquire first about
heredity. Or if, for example, someone appears with a
pre-disposition to illness, they ask: “What about the
hereditary relationships?”

This
question is, indeed, at the outset quite justifiable, but in
their whole attitude toward these things, people today ignore
the real human being; they completely ignore him. They do not
observe what his true being is, how his true being unfolds.
Naturally, they say in the first place that he is the child of
his parents, the descendant of his forebears. Certainly,
this can be seen. Even in his outer physiognomy; and still
more, perhaps, in his gestures do we see the likeness to his
ancestors emerging. But not only this; we see also how the
human being has his whole physical organism as a product of
what is given to him by his forebears. He carries this physical
organism about with him, a fact which is pointed out very
forcefully today.

People
fail, however, to observe the following: When he is born, the
human being has most assuredly, at the outset, his physical
organism from his parents. But what is this physical organism
which he receives from his parents? In that regard the man of
modern civilization thinks fundamentally quite falsely.

When
the human being has reached the time of change of teeth, he not
only exchanges his first teeth for others, but this is also the
moment in life when the entire human being — as an
organization — is renewed for the first time. There is a
thorough-going difference between what the human being
becomes in his eighth and ninth year of life, and what he was
in his third or fourth year. It is a decisive difference. What
he was — as an organism — in his third or fourth
year, he received through heredity. His parents gave him that.
What comes into being in his eighth or ninth year is the
result, in the highest degree, of what he himself has brought
down from the spiritual world.

If we
wish to indicate in outline the really fundamental facts, we
must do it in the following way — shocking though it may
be to modern mankind. We must say, the human being receives as
he is being born something like a model of his human form. He
receives this model from his forbears; they bestow upon him a
model. Then, aided by this model, he develops what he becomes
later. What he then develops, however, is the result of what he
brings down with him from the spiritual worlds.

Shocking as it may be to human beings of today, if they are
completely immersed in modern culture, we must,
nevertheless, make the following assertion: The first teeth
which the human being receives are entirely inherited; they are
the products of heredity. They serve him as a model according
to which he fashions his second teeth in conformity to the
forces he brings with him from the spiritual world. These he
elaborates.

And as
it is with the teeth, so is it with the body as a whole. Only,
this question might arise: Why do we human beings need a model?
Why can we not do just what we did in earlier phases of earth
evolution? Why is it not possible as we descend and draw toward
ourselves our ether body — which we do, as you know, with
our own forces brought with us from the spiritual world,
— why is it not possible likewise simply to gather to
ourselves physical matter, and without the help of physical
forbears form our own physical body?

To the
modern human being's way of thinking, this question is
obviously an example of monumental stupidity, an example
of insanity. But then, we must indeed say that with respect to
the insanity of the above statement, the Theory of Relativity
holds good, although it is applied today only to movement,
postulating, as it does, that we cannot tell from observation
whether we are moving together with the body on which we find
ourselves or whether it is the nearby body which is moving.
(This fact became clearly evident in the exchange of the
ancient cosmic theory for the Copernican.) But, although at
present the Theory of Relativity is applied only to movement,
it holds good — for it has a certain sphere of validity
— it holds good also in regard to the aforesaid insanity:
namely, here are two people who differ greatly; each one thinks
the other crazy; the only question is, — which of the two
is actually crazy.

Well,
in relation to the facts of the spiritual world this question
must, nevertheless, be raised: Why does the human being need a
model? Older world conceptions have given the answer in their
own way. Only in modern times, when morality is no longer
included in the cosmic order, but is admitted solely as a human
convention, are such questions no longer asked. More ancient
world conceptions have not only asked these questions;
they have even answered them. Originally, they said, the human
being was so constituted that he was able to establish himself
on the earth in the following manner: Just as he now draws to
himself his ether body out of the general cosmic ether
substance, so did he draw to himself the substances of the
earth to form his physical body. But he fell a prey to the
Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, and as a result, he lost
the faculty of building his physical body out of his own
essential being. He must now receive it through heredity.

This
way of obtaining the physical body is, for the human being, the
result of “original sin,” hereditary sin. This is
what ancient world conceptions said. This is the fundamental
meaning of “original sin,” hereditary in the
necessity of inserting oneself into the relationships of
heredity.

In our
age, the concepts must be provided again in order, first, to
take such questions seriously, and secondly, in order to find
the answers. It is a fact that the human being in his earthly
evolution has not remained is strong as was his predisposition
before the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences were present.
Therefore, he cannot form his physical body through his own
capacities as soon as he enters the earthly conditions, but he
needs a model, that model which grows during the first seven
years of human life. Since he conforms to this model, it is but
natural that something of the model, more or less, remains with
him in his later life. The human being who, working on himself,
is completely dependent on the model will forget — if I
may put it so — what he actually brought down with him
and will entirely conform to the model. Another human being who
has acquired stronger inner force through his former earth
lives will conform less to the model, and it will be possible
to see how significantly he changes in the second phase of
life, between the change of teeth and puberty.

The
school will even have the task, if it is a true school, to
bring about in the human being the unfoldment of what he has
brought into physical earth existence out of the spiritual
worlds. Hence, what the human being carries further with
him in life contains the inherited characteristics in
greater or lesser degree, according as he is able or is not
able to overcome them.

Now,
just remember, my dear friends, that all things have their
spiritual aspect. What the human being possesses as his
body in the first seven years of life is simply a model to
which he conforms. Either his spiritual forces are to some
extent submerged in what is forced upon him by the model and he
remains quite dependent on the model, or he works into the
model during the first seven years of life that which will
transform the model. This work, this elaboration, finds
expression outwardly. For it is not merely a question that work
is done and that this here (see
Figure VI)
is the original
model; but the original model gradually detaches itself, peels
off, so to speak, falls away, just as the first teeth fall out.
Everything falls away. The matter is as follows: From one side,
the forms and forces press upon the model; on the other, the
human being wills to express what he has brought down to the
earth. That causes a battle during the first seven years of
life. Seen from the spiritual standpoint, this battle signifies
what comes to outward symptomatic expression in the
illnesses of childhood. The diseases of childhood arc the
expression of this inward struggle.

Figure VI

Needless to say, similar forms of illness occur in human beings
later in life. That is the case if, for example, someone did
not succeed very well in overcoming the model during the first
seven years of life. Then the impulse may emerge later in life
to get rid of what has thus karmically remained in him. Thus,
in his twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth year of life, the human
being may suddenly feel inwardly aroused against the model; he
will only then collide with it and, as a result, fall prey to
some illness of childhood.

If one
has an eye for it, one can observe how strongly the following
appears in many children: they change essentially in
physiognomy and gesture after the seventh or eighth year of
life. No one knows whence certain things come. Today, when the
prevailing view of civilization adheres so strongly to
heredity, this has even passed over into our way of speaking.
If, in the eighth or ninth year, some feature suddenly emerges
in a child which is deeply rooted in the organism, the father
may say: “Anyhow, he did not get that from me,”
while the mother may say: “Well, most certainly not from
me.” All this is due to the common belief which has found
its way into the parental consciousness that the children must
have inherited everything from their parents.

On the
other hand, it may often be observed how children grow even
more like their parents in this second phase of life than they
were previously. Here we must take in full seriousness
the way the human being descends into the physical world.

Please
note that Psycho-Analysis has, indeed, produced many really
horrible swamp flowers; among them, for example, is the
following — this may be read today everywhere —
namely, that in the hidden, subconscious mind, every son is in
love with his mother and every daughter with her father, and
that this condition causes life conflicts in the subconscious
provinces of the soul. [Cf. Rudolf Steiner:
Psycho-Analysis in the Light of Anthroposophy
(in preparation). {It's prepared! - e.Ed}]

All
these are amateurish interpretations of life. The truth,
however, is that the human being is in love with his parents
already before he descends into earthly existence, that he
descends because they please him. Only, we must naturally
distinguish the judgment which people have here on earth about
life from the judgment they have about it outside the earthly
life between death and a new birth.

On one
occasion, in the early stages of our anthroposophical activity,
a lady appeared among us who had heard of reincarnation. She
liked other things in Anthroposophy very much indeed, but in
repeated earth lives she would not participate; one earth life
was quite enough for her — with others she would have
nothing to do. Now, at that time there were already very
well-meaning adherents among us who tried in every possible way
to convince the good lady that the idea was, after all, a
correct one, and that every human being must participate in
repeated earth lives. One friend belabored her from the left,
and another from the right. She then departed, but two days
later she wrote me a post card to the effect that, after all,
she did not intend to be born again on earth!

In
such a case, the one who wishes simply to tell the truth out of
spiritual knowledge must say to people: “Certainly, it
may be that, while you are here on earth, it is not at all to
your liking that you should come down again to earth in some
future life. But that is by no means decisive. Here on earth,
you go through the gate of death into the spiritual world. You
are willing to do this. Whether or not you wish to descend
again depends on the judgment which will be yours when you no
longer carry your body about with you. Then you will form quite
a different judgment.” The judgments a human being has in
physical life on earth are different in every way from those he
has between death and a new birth. For there every point of
view changes.

These
are the facts. If you tell a human being here on earth —
a young human being, perhaps — that he has chosen his
father, he might object under certain circumstances and say:
“Do you mean that I chose the father who has beaten me so
badly?” Yes, certainly, he chose him; for the youth had
quite another point of view before he came down to earth. He
then had the point of view that the thrashings would do him
much good ... This is, indeed, no laughing matter, it is meant
in the deepest earnestness. In the same way a man also chooses
his parents according to their form and figure. He has a
picture of himself before him — the picture that he will
resemble his parents. He does not become like them through
heredity, but through his own inner soul and spirit forces, the
forces he brings down with him from the spirit world. The
moment, therefore, that we come to an all-inclusive opinion out
of spiritual science as well as physical science, such
wholesale statements are without exception no longer valid, for
instance, the assertion: “I have seen children who became
more like their parents only in the second phase of their
life.” Certainly, that is then just the other case, where
these children intended to take on for this earth life the form
of their parents.

Now it
is a fact that the human being, during the whole time between
death and a new birth, works in union with other departed souls
and with the beings of the higher worlds upon that which makes
it possible for him to build his body.

You
see, we generally underestimate greatly the importance of what
a man carries in his subconscious nature. As earth men, we are
far wiser in the subconscious than in the conscious nature. It
is, indeed, out of a far-reaching, universal, cosmic wisdom
that we elaborate that which becomes within the model
during the second phase of life the form that we then bear as
our own human nature, the one that belongs to us. If, at some
future time, we become aware of how little we really absorb, as
far as the substance of the body is concerned, from the food we
eat, how we take in far more from all that we absorb in a very
finely diluted condition from the air and light, then we shall
more readily be able to believe that the human being builds up
his second body for the second life period quite independently
of all hereditary conditions; he builds it entirely out of his
environment. The first body is, actually, only a model. That
which comes from the parents — as substance as well as
the outer bodily forces — is no longer there in the
second phase of life.

In the
second life period the child's relationship to his parents
becomes an ethical, a soul relationship. Only in the first
period of life, that is, up to the seventh year, is it a
physical, hereditary relationship.

Now,
there are human beings in this earthly life who take a keen
interest in all that surrounds them in the visible cosmos.
There are men who observe the plants, observe the animal world;
they enter with interest into this or that thing in the
visible world around them. They take an interest in the majesty
of the star-studded heavens. They take part, so to speak, with
their souls in the entire physical cosmos. The inner life of a
human being who has this warm interest in the physical cosmos
differs from the inner life of one who passes the world by with
a certain indifference, with a phlegmatic attitude of soul.

In
this respect, we have a whole scale of human characters. On the
one side, for example, there is a man who has taken a very
short journey. When we talk to him afterwards, he describes
with infinite love the city in which he has been, down to the
minutest detail. Through his keen interest we may thus
gain a complete picture of the city he had visited. Prom this
extreme we can pass to the opposite, — to such as the
instance, when I encountered two elderly ladies who had just
travelled from Vienna to Pressburg. Pressburg is a beautiful
city. They had returned, and I asked them what it was like in
Pressburg, how they had liked it. They could tell me nothing
except that they had seen two pretty little dachshunds down by
the riverside. These they could have seen just as well in
Vienna, they need not have gone to Pressburg for that purpose.
But they had seen nothing else. Thus do many people go through
the world.

Between these two extremes of the scale, there lies, indeed,
every kind and degree of interest which the human being can
have for what is in the physically visible world. Let us
suppose someone has little interest for the surrounding
physical world. It may be that he just manages to interest
himself in the things that immediately concern his bodily life
— whether, for instance, one can eat more or less well in
this or that district. Beyond that his interests do not go. His
soul remains poor. He does not imprint the world on himself.
And he carries in his inner life very little of what has
radiated toward him from the phenomena of the world through the
gate of death over into the spiritual realms. Because of this
he finds the work with the spiritual beings, with whom he now
comes into contact, very difficult. And, in consequence, he
brings back in his soul not strength, not energy, but
feebleness, a kind of powerlessness for the upbuilding of his
physical body. The model, to be sure, works strongly upon him.
The fight with the model finds expression in the manifold
illnesses of childhood; but the weakness persists. He forms, so
to speak, a frail or sickly body, subject to all manner of
illnesses. Thus, our soul-spirit interest from one earth life
is transformed karmically into the state of health in the next
life. Human beings who are “bursting with health”
had a keen interest in the visible world in a former
incarnation. And in this regard, the details of life act very
powerfully.

It is
certainly more or less risky nowadays to speak of these things.
But we shall understand the relationships of karma only if we
are ready to occupy ourselves with the details about it. The
art of painting, for example, already existed at a time when
human souls, now living, were living in a former earth life;
and there were human beings who had no interest at all in
painting. Even today there are people who are quite indifferent
whether they have some atrocity hanging on the walls of their
room, or a well-painted picture. And there were also such
people at the time when the souls who are living today were
present in former earth lives. Indeed, my dear friends, I have
never found a human being with a pleasing face, a sympathetic
expression, who did not take delight in the art of painting in
a former earth life. The people with an unpleasing expression
(which, after all, also plays its part in karma and has its
significance for destiny) were always those who had
passed by the works of the art of painting with obtuse and
phlegmatic indifference.

But
these things go much farther. There are human beings (and there
were also such in former epochs of the earth) who never look up
at the stars, who do not know where Leo is, or Aries, or
Taurus, who have no interest in anything in this connection.
Such people will be born, in a subsequent earth life, with a
body that is somehow indolent; or, if through the vigor of
their parents they receive a model which carries them beyond
this, they become flabby, lacking in energy and vigor in the
body which they then build for themselves.

And
thus, it is possible to trace back the state of health which
the human being bears with him in a given earth life to the
interest he had taken in the visible world to the widest extent
during his former earth life.

People, for instance, who in our time take absolutely no
interest in music — people to whom music is a matter of
indifference — will certainly be born again in a next
earth life with asthmatic trouble, or with some disease of the
lungs; or, they will be born with a susceptibility to asthma or
lung disease. It is an actual fact that the quality of soul
which develops in one earth life through the interest we take
in the visible world comes to expression in our next earth life
in our general bodily disposition in regard to health or
illness.

Perhaps, someone might now say: “To know of such things
may well take away one's taste for the next earth life.”
That, again, is a judgment pronounced from the earthly
standpoint, my dear friends, which is certainly not the
only one; for the life between death and a new birth lasts
longer than the earth life. If a man is obtuse to something
visible in his environment, he remains incapable of working in
certain realms between death and a new birth, and he has
passed, let us say, through the gate of death with the
consequences of this lack of interest. After death, he
proceeds on his way. He cannot get near certain beings;
certain beings hold themselves apart from him, for he cannot
approach them. Other human souls with whom he was associated on
earth remain strangers to him. This would go on forever; there
would be something like a punishment in Hell for eternity, if
this could not be modified. The only cure, the only
compensation, lies in his resolving — between death
and a new birth — to come down again into earthly life
and feel in a sick body that which is an incapacity in
the spiritual world. Between death and new birth he desires
this cure, for he lives with awareness of but one thing,
namely, that there is something he cannot do; but he feels this
in such a way that in the further course of events, when he
dies again, and again passes through the time between death and
a new birth, that which was earthly pain becomes the impulse to
enter into what he missed the last time. Thus, we may say that
in all essentials, we carry with our karma health and disease
out of the spiritual world down into the physical.

And if
we bear in mind in this connection that it is not always a
karma in course of fulfillment, but also a karma in process of
becoming, so that certain things may also appear for the first
time, then we shall naturally not relate to the former earth
lives of a human being everything he experiences in his
physical life as regards health and illness. That which, with
its roots in the inner nature, appears in regard to the
conditions of health and illness, is, we shall know, karmically
determined in the roundabout way I have just
characterized. The world becomes explicable only when we are
able to look beyond this earthly life. Without this the world
is inexplicable; it cannot be explained by means of the earth
life.

If
from the inner conditions of karma, which ensue from the
organism, we now pass on to what is external, toward the outer,
we may once more — only in order, at the outset, to come
in contact with karma, as it were — we may once more
proceed from a realm of facts which touches the human being
closely. Let us take, for example, that which can be very
strongly connected with the general mood of soul health and
illness in our relationship with other human beings.

I
should like to offer the following case: Some one finds a
friend in his youth. An intimate friendship of youth is formed;
the two friends are very devoted to one another. Life separates
them, so that both of them, perhaps — or, perhaps, one
especially — look back with a certain sadness to this
youthful friendship. But it does not permit of renewal. However
often they meet in life, their friendship of youth is not again
renewed. If you consider how much in destiny can sometimes
depend on such a broken friendship of youth, then you will
admit that this sort of thing can profoundly affect a
person's karma.

We
should speak as little as possible about such things out of
mere theory. To speak out of theory has very little value. In
truth, we should speak of such things only from direct
perception or else on the basis of that which we have heard or
read in the communications of those who are able to have direct
perception, and which appears plausible to us and is
comprehensible. There is no value in theorizing about these
things. Therefore I say, when you endeavor with spiritual
perception to get behind such an event as a broken friendship
of youth, the following results: If we go back into a former
earth life, we usually find that both individuals who in one
life had a friendship in their youth which was afterwards
broken, were in an earlier incarnation friends in the later
part of their life.

Let us
assume, for instance, two young people — boys or girls
— are friends until their twentieth year. Then the
friendship of their youth breaks. If we go back with spiritual
cognition into a former earth life, we find there that a
friendship also existed, but it had begun around the twentieth
year and continued on into later life. That is a very
interesting case, which we often find when we follow up things
with spiritual science.

In the
first place, when we examine the case more exactly, it appears
that the urge to know a person also as he was in youth with
whom we had a friendship in our mature years leads us in the
next life to a youthful friendship with him. In a former life
we knew him as a mature human being. That brought into our soul
the urge to become acquainted with him also in youth. This we
could no longer do in that life, so we carry it out in the next
life.

But
that has a great influence if in one or both of these
individuals this urge arises, passes through death, and then
lives itself out in the spiritual world between death and a new
birth. For there is then something present in the
spiritual world like a fixed staring at the period of youth. We
have this quite special longing to fix our gaze on the time of
youth, and we do not develop the urge to become acquainted with
our friend once more in his maturity. Thus, the youthful
friendship is broken which was predetermined between us by the
life we had lived through before we came down to earth.

This
is decidedly a case which I recount to you out of real life,
for what I am now relating is absolutely real. The question,
however, arises here: What was the mature friendship really
like in the former life, so that it caused this urge to arise
to have the human being as a friend again in youth in a new
earth life?

Now,
in order that the impulse to experience this youthful
friendship does not, however, increase into a wish to have the
friend also in later life, something else must occur. In all
the instances of which I am aware, the following has invariably
been the case: If these two human beings had remained united in
their later life, if their youthful friendship had not been
broken, they would have grown tired of each other, bored with
one another, because their friendship which occurred in
maturity in a former life developed too egotistically. The
egotism of friendships in one earth life avenges itself
karmically by the loss of these friendships in other earth
lives.

Figure VII

Thus,
things are complicated; but we can always find a guiding line
if we see the following: It is a fact in many cases that two
human beings in one earth life — let us say — go
each his own way until their twentieth year, and thenceforward
continue on together in friendship (see
Figure VII,
No. I). In
a subsequent earth life, this picture (I) corresponds to
another
(Figure VII,
No. II), the picture of the youthful
friendship after which their lives separate. This is very
frequently the case. Indeed, it will generally be found that
the various earth lives — seen, as it were, according to
their configuration — mutually supplement each other.
Especially is the following frequently found to be true. If we
encounter a human being who has a strong effect upon our
destiny — this applies, naturally, only as a general
rule; it is not applicable in all cases — but if we meet
an individual in the middle period of life in one incarnation,
we have had him beside us perhaps at the beginning and at the
end of life in a prior incarnation in accordance with destiny.
The picture is then as follows: We live through the beginning
and the end of one incarnation together with the other
human being, and in another incarnation, we live with him
neither at the beginning nor at the end, but we only encounter
him in the middle period of life.

Figure VIII

Or
again, it may be that as a child we are bound by destiny to
another human being; in a former life we were linked to the
same individual just before we experienced death. Such
reflections occur with extreme frequency in karmic
relationships.